amazontablet2011
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Amazon Kindle family portrait
And golly, don't they look proud. On the left, the new $99 Kindle Touch. On the right, the new $79 Kindle. And, in the middle, the $199 Kindle Fire tablet. So, which would you rather? If you need more help deciding, check out the gallery, which features the third-generation Kindle thrown into the mix.%Gallery-135099%
Amazon Kindle (2011) impressions
Price was one of the recurring themes at today's Amazon event in New York City, and nowhere was that factor more present than with the new Kindle. At $79, this truly is an entry level device, and certainly the company made some sacrifices to hit that price point -- most obviously, the reader doesn't have the touchscreen featured in both the Kindle Touch and the latest Nook and Kobo devices -- though like those products, the Kindle did lose its physical keyboard, giving it a much smaller footprint than the last generation. In place of the infrared touchscreen are a series of buttons: Home, Menu, Keyboard and Back. In the middle is a toggle button that lets the user scroll through menus -- that activity can be performed pretty quickly with the physical buttons, and flipping through pages is not problem with the familiar buttons on either side of the screen. Where one really misses the presence of touch, however, is with the on-screen keyboard -- typing is performed by clicking one's way through the virtual keyboard, a familiar task for anyone who has ever entered their name at the beginning of a video game with a console controller. Of course, typing is a secondary task on a device like this, so for many users this may not be a deal-breaker. For those who foresee the need for such functionality, however, $20 will buy you an upgrade to the Kindle Touch.%Gallery-135083%
Amazon Kindle Touch impressions (video)
One of the three major devices launched at today's Amazon event, the Kindle Touch is aimed firmly at the latest touchscreen Nook and Kobo devices. Like those readers, the new Kindle is based around an infrared touchscreen in the place of a physical keyboard, making the device a good deal smaller than the Kindle 3. The touchscreen is fairly responsive, and the thing flips through pages quickly with a swipe or a tap, refreshing about once every six pages or so, a rate about on-par with that of its chief competition. A task like performing a search on the other hand, requires a much larger screen refresh -- still, activities like these and typing are performed quite quickly for an E-Ink device. The search function itself is rather precise, letting the user locate instances of things like character names throughout a text. In all, it looks as though Amazon has produced a worthy competitor to the space-leading touch devices -- and the $99 / $149 price tags for the WiFi and 3G versions certainly don't hurt. Check out a video of the device after the break.%Gallery-135080%
Amazon Kindle Fire impressions (video)
Alas, we've not been able to get our hands on Amazon's diminutive new 7-inch, $199 Kindle Fire tablet just yet, but we were treated to a lengthy demo of the thing courtesy of an Amazon rep, answering many of our questions and showing us just what how the thing performs. How does it fare? Very well, thank you very much. More details after the break.%Gallery-135077%
Amazon Silk browser spins a faster mobile web, courtesy of cloud servers (video)
Part of Amazon's new Kindle Fire pitch is its promise of Amazon Silk -- a "split browser" exclusive to the tablet that gets the heavy lifting done on its EC2 cloud servers and promises faster access as a result. Dubbed Silk to represent an "invisible, yet incredibly strong connection", it takes advantage of Amazon's existing speedy connections, and that so many sites are already hosted on its servers to speed up web access. Another feature is its ability to learn from previous web surfers and use their data to determine how to render a page, and which sites to precache on the device before you even select the next link. While mobile browsers like Skyfire and Opera have offered speed boosting proxies before, Amazon thinks its AWS prowess and the addition of "dynamic decisions" about what to render locally or in the cloud takes it to another level. Read our live blog of the event for more details, or check out the video explanation and press release after the break.
Live from Amazon's tablet event in NYC!
Okay, so we don't know that we'll be seeing a tablet (or two) today, but that's what we're expecting, and regardless we're eager to see what the company has in store for us. We're getting settled in at Stage 37 here in New York City (a place we're very familiar with) and the event begins soon. Join us as we find out what's next.
Amazon Kindle Fire tablet unveiled: Android-based, 7-inch display, $199 price tag
Okay, so it wasn't much of a surprise, but Amazon finally has a tablet, and as expected its name picks up where the Kindle left off: Fire. Of course, rumors of an Amazon tablet date back to this time last year (if not before), but it seems that Jeff and co. have wisely chosen to get this thing out on the open market before having yet another wild and wacky holiday quarter. Bloomberg has curiously reported on some of the details before the event itself kicks off, noting that the 7-inch device will run a version of Android while acting much like a "souped-up Kindle." The real kicker, however, is the price -- at just $199, it's bound to turn heads, regardless of whether you were interested in a slate before. Naturally, that bargain-bin sticker explains the lack of an embedded camera and microphone, though consumers will find WiFi (no 3G, sadly) and a 30-day trial of Amazon Prime. It's also quite clear that Amazon's hoping to make a bigger splash on the content side of things than has been made already by Apple, and with the deals flowing like wine, we wouldn't be shocked if it does just that. Update: Itching for specs? How's about a 7-inch IPS (!) panel, Gorilla Glass coating, a 1GHz TI OMAP dual-core CPU, 512MB of RAM, 8GB of internal storage and a chassis that weighs 14.6 ounces. There's also access to things you'd expect to have access to: Android Appstore (though no access to Google's Android Market!), Kindle books, magazines, etc. -- all stored for free via Amazon Cloud Storage. Per Jeff: "Delete it and get it back when you want." Oh, and Whispersync now works with movies and TV shows! "When you get home, switch to your big screen TV. Your movie will be right where you left it." While it's clearly Android underneath, the actual UI looks effectively nothing like it -- considering TechCrunch's intel that Amazon went and did its own thing without Google's blessing, we guess that makes some level of sense. Oh, and pre-orders are set to start today (but only for Americans... boo), with shipments heading out on November 15th. Update 2: We've added the first commercial video after the break. Update 3: Check out our hands-on impressions right here! Keep up with the unveiling at our liveblog of the Amazon event. %Gallery-135068% %Gallery-135074%
